U.S. patent application Ser. No. 534,031 filed Sept. 20 1983 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,585,351, F. J. Gronek et al for "Apparatus for Inspecting Surface Mounted Components", and assigned to the assignee hereof, and incorporated herein by this reference, discloses in FIGS. 7 and 8 a polyhedral mirror for side inspection of electrical components surface mounted on printed wiring boards. Such polyhedral mirror comprises four square separate metal mirror members mounted on four sides of a through cavity in a bracket member so that the mirrors each have an inward slant in the downward direction. A polyhedral mirror of such sort is useful in, say, inspecting all four sides of chip carriers or other rectangular electrical components mounted on printed wiring boards. In use, the device is positioned to surround the component so that the four mirrors of the device register with and are outward of the four sides of the component. Light from these sides is reflected by the mirrors upward into a low power microscope to permit inspection of the component sides from above.
Such polyhedral mirror arrangement has, however, the disadvantages that its structure is costly and that different size mirrors must be made from different size parts.